Maps have always fascinated me. Their jagged lines charting ancient trade routes, the arbitrary but hotly contested borders of countries come and gone, and of course the promise of far away lands they hold. Each month when the newest National Geographic showed up on our porch I would race to see what new wonders were inside, and what map was folded into the middle of those glossy pages. I learned how maps can contain important information about the natural world and can even be used to predict future trends. Maps had a personal place in our home as well. My Mom always kept a Rand Macnally atlas of the US in the car. We would trace familiar routes to family vacation destinations, look up areas various far flung family members were living, and use the stats at the top of each page to wonder about people from other states. Each of these maps made the world seem vast, but also broke it into manageable pieces.
Maps have long been used as a source of information both environmental and societal, but they also have the ability to become an interactive component of our lessons!
They provide historical, social, and environmental information depending on the map you’re looking at, or how you look at any map. Looking at maps has long been a classroom staple of information gathering and synthesizing. But what I want to talk about here is how the making of maps can transform your lessons and classroom.
Before we get started on lesson ideas, here are a couple of my favorite teacher and classroom-friendly digital mapping tools.
Google Maps: Google Maps is nearly ubiquitous in today's society. However, it can do so much more than simply get you safely to your destination. Like most Google apps, Maps can become a powerful collaborative learning tool. Streets and historical sites can be seen using Street View, allowing students to virtually step into places new to them. Students can work together to make themed maps by creating informative pins. For example, students could research and pin places that have successfully implemented student recycling programs. Each pin could contain information about the school or recycling program.
Zee Maps: Zee Maps is another way for students to build maps together. Each map is themed, and can be as large (whole world) or as small (your city or state) as your project dictates. Students are able to create pins in any location, found by name, address, or even coordinates. Pins can then be personalized with images, links, written descriptions, or other file types. Students have created world maps sharing art and music from places they have visited or lived. They were equally excited to share their own pin, and see what their classmates
Padlet: Padlet is a digital tool I use frequently in my classes for anything from sharing out artists and work to critiques, to my favorite use of all: mapping! Creating a map is one of the options on the very first screen when making a new padlet. You can choose what the map looks like, and creating pins is super simple. I love using padlet the most because of the ease with which all students can make their own pins. Pins can include links, videos, pictures, writing, etc. Comments and “likes” can be made on each pin if desired.
So how can I utilize map-making in my classroom?
Identity Maps
Mapping can be much more personal as well. Identity mapping is a great tool to help students create a holistic view of who they are as a person, both what they present to the outside world, and their interior personality traits and motivations. There are tons of resources available online for how to start identity mapping, and here is one I particularly like:
The scale of the identity map does not matter in the slightest. Some students will have a map that spans the globe or country, some students will have a map that consists mainly of their own home or town. Make sure students know that each of these options is valid.
Students should begin by generating a list of 5-6 places that are important to them. This could be fact-based like where they were born, where they have lived, or where a favorite family member lives. Or it can be a place of intrinsic importance, such as where a favorite memory occurred, a place they used to play, or a spot where they once saw a beautiful sunset. Encourage students to have different kinds of connections to the various places they choose.
Creating the Map
Creating the map can be done in a myriad of ways to best fit your individual students. We have a big box of old roadmaps in my room to use for collaging, so some students opted to create directly onto an existing map. Maps of student hometowns can be obtained online and made available in digital or print forms. Students can also create the underlying maps themselves! Maps drawn or created by students do not have to be geographically correct, as the intention here is to map themselves, not the exact world in which they live.
Next, students will create a small artwork for each of their chosen places. Style and media are the choice of the artist and nearly anything can work for this. Drawing, collage, digital, painting, the options are limitless. Encourage students to focus on how the place makes them feel, their memories there, as well as what the place looks like. The image/artwork doesn’t even actually have to be a picture of the place, but could be an item, a person, or anything else that ties them there. FInally, attach the small artworks to the map. To wrap up and reflect, have students share their maps with their peers. They can swap and try to “read” another student’s map in order to learn more about them.
This entire process could also be done digitally with each child making a padlet or google map and pinning their artworks as appropriate places. Here is an example of one I made for my students. https://padlet.com/Darby_Art_Dept/identity-mapping-boza-s-sketchbooks-gevwm56n69qui816
Art History and Movement Maps
Take any of the great movements of art history. Students, split into teams can map the birth of and spread of each movement. Before their eyes the map will reveal just how far-reaching certain movements were, and which were more of a flash in the pan. You could categorize these by decade or generation, using different colored pins for each to see the time frame as compared to the location. For example, surrealism’s spread from Europe to the Americas and beyond.
The Great Rice Map
Not all maps are created based on the globe and world around us. My favorite books growing up would include a map in the first few pages to show the new and imagined world that would bloom in the story ahead. Creating maps of fantasy worlds can be a great creativity and imagination builder in our students.
One of the greatest methods I’ve seen lately to start a map is simply with a bag of rice! Thanks tiktok! Spill the rice onto a paper, and trace the shapes to create an interesting and variegated border of your map. Trace the small pieces that fell away from the group as offshore islands. Have students come up with a theme for their map and start filling it in. They can think about geological features like water, biomes, and land masses. Or they can focus on cities, towns, and places that are inhabited by the creatures who live in this new place. This would be an excellent time to practice watercolor techniques, or mixed media!
Getting Art Out Into the Community: Mapping and Street Art
The beauty of street and public art is that it can be seen by anyone, anytime, without admission costs, and without pretense. It can be seen and interpreted by anyone as each viewer brings their own experience and history with them. With this in mind while starting a unit on street art, I wanted to make sure my students had a solid foundation of knowledge before making their own artworks. We debated the difference between graffiti, street art, and public art. Through videos and articles, we learned about places where street art is being used to bring back life into forgotten neighborhoods. And of course we looked at TONS of art around the country and world.
Mapping made looking at street art from around the city, country, and world a much more interactive experience for my students. I have long been drawn to street art and have taken pictures of great examples of it in my travels. I wanted students to be able to find trends in street and public art, and contrast what it looks like in different places. So I have been creating a resource we can all add to: the World Street Art Map.
With the map we compared and contrasted the images, styles, and themes with what they saw in Hilliard and Columbus, as well as in other parts of the US and Europe.
Each student was then tasked with creating a piece of art to be displayed in public with the intention of making the community more aware of an idea, issue, or concern.
Students painted, drew, collaged, and used digital tools to create unique pieces that could be turned into public murals. They picked topics that are important to themselves, as well as the rest of their community members. Once students were done with their artworks, they thought about site specificity and where viewing the artwork would have the greatest impact on the community. They drove, walked, or biked to locations, took pictures, and finally digitally superimposed the images onto their chosen buildings. We built a map of the locations of their proposed works to share with other classes, the local arts commission, and themselves.
For more information, check out the entire unit plan here: https://bethjbrown.wixsite.com/globalclassroom/post/street-art-unit-plan
Mapping as an Inter-school Activity
Connecting with other classes is a great way to expand your students' learning. You could connect with other schools in your own district to make connections between grade levels. Or you could connect with other classes around the country or world for a fresh perspective!
Check out some digital tools and sites that will help connect you to classrooms around the world:
Some things you could share:
Local artists and musicians: My students collaborated with the Virtual School of Florida to make a map of their favorite musicians and artists. Students added a pin of where the art or artist was from, as well as a short video message describing why they picked who or what they did. Using the videos prompted most students to reply and form true connections with the kids from our partnering school. One thing to focus on is how the location might have influenced the artist.
Local flora or fauna: create artworks featuring plants and animals that are native to the area in which your students live. Pin pictures of their artworks on a map showing a generalized area of where you might find this animal or plant. This could also be a fabulous way to do a cross-curricular study with science classes.
“Postcards” from around town: draw small postcards of places in your school, city, or town to share what your hometown looks like. Pin the location of the postcard on the map and share with your collaborating school, who can then add their postcards as well.
I hope you have enjoyed just a couple of ways you can include map making into your classroom. There are so many other ways to use maps as a starting or end point with nearly any grade or media. What else could you do? What are your ideas?
Other Great Mapping Resources
Both of these online maps share different sets of data that can be worked into student projects tied to environmental or social issues. For one way to use data sets as the basis of a studio project, check this out: (link to data driven art)
Gap Minder: Gapminder identifies systematic misconceptions about important global trends and proportions and uses reliable data to develop easy to understand teaching materials to rid people of their misconceptions There are numerous powerful ways to see stats about economics, population, environmental issues, gender gap, and more. In the map section students can choose from a vast list of data, and see it populated across the globe. It is fascinating to see the data laid out this way, teachers and students will have a hard time looking away.
Mapping the Nation is an interactive map that pulls together demographic, economic, and education indicators—nearly one million data points—to show that the United States is a truly global nation.
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